Kevin's Watch

Hi Rockbrothers,

a question that occurred to me today: why do you think SRD chose Hile Troy to be eyeless. Is there any hidden meaning to this? Did he want to give us an incontrovertible proof that the Land was real by giving Troy the gift of sight? But that is no proof really. Did he need Troy's special ability for dealing with spatial relationships? As for that, simple blindness would have sufficed. Why no eyes at all? Or did SRD just like the idea?
Or am I missing something?

I don't think the reality of the Land for us was the issue. The only person that needed to stuggle with that question was Covenant (and later, Linden). I don't think that Donaldson ever intended to prove or disprove the reality of the Land to the reader - it was much more important to see how the characters from the real world struggled with that question.

I guess the exception is Gilden Fire. That chapter was removed in order to keep the perspective in the book entirely from a real-world character (Troy or Covenant). But even then, it wasn't to keep the reader guessing on the question of the reality of the Land - it was keep the book itself solid from that perspective.

The "no eyes" as opposed to "simple blindness" is a good question. My guess is that he wanted to make it clear from the start that Troy was always blind - that he never saw anything in his entire life until he entered the Land. That adds some fuel to the reality/dream fire for Covenant. And it would also explain the sunglasses, which Troy wouldn't need if he did have eyes and could now see in the Land. That detail certainly made the character jump out when he was first introduced in the Close, and had us scratching our heads about it until Mhoram finally explained that Troy was from Covenant's world.

I think it was to prove that he had no apparatus for sight. So despite his landsight (hmm, kinda like Geordi LaForge, now that I think about it), he was blind to the core of his being (not just something that was done to him, or something taken away from him)... blind in the same way Kevin was blind.

Yes. It wasn't that the Land healed broken eyes - it gave him the ability to see despite the entire lack of them.

Is "eyelessness" actually a real affliction here on earth?

Well, it might be. I'll have to check on that.

There's a lot of strange (and euqally sad) things in the real world. Babies born with ... hardware ... of both sexes, twins born with parts of their bodies fused together, seriously misfigured limbs, etc. etc. Although I've never seen a picture of a person who was born eyeless, but I never questioned for a moment that it could happen.

Yes. I always figured that someone could be born eyeless. I never was able to picture that in my head though.

My thought on Hile Troy was that he was someone who came from the "real" world and, unlike TC, accepted and welcomed the healing powers of the Land. That is fundamenally opposite of TC's view of the Land.

If people have been born without eyes, I don't know.

I did a little investigating. Being born without eyes does occur. It's called Bilateral Anophthalmia and occurs when both eyes (Anopthalmia is when only one eye is missing) don't develop during the first 28 days of pregnancy.

Support groups say anopthalmia may result from genetic mutations, sporadic genetic mutations, chromosome abnormalities, environmental reasons or other unknown causes. Some sources estimate the defect appears in about one in 10,000 births.

Thanks for the research!

Wow - 1 in 10k. That sounds pretty high, considering I never heard of an actual person who had the condition. Maybe the survival rate for those babies (because of other defects that may accompany that condition) is extremely low.

I think SRD made Troy eyeless so that he would be more passionate, and therefore more convincing to TC. What I mean is, if he had become blind some time after birth, or even born blind but with eyes, it wouldn't have been as miraculous a feat to give him sight. We can do lots of neat stuff like that now. In that situation, Troy might have been very happy and grateful.

But we cannot come anywhere near giving sight to someone without eyes! In this situation, Troy was awed beyond belief, dedicated himself to the Land that performed this miracle for him, and did a better job of trying to convince TC than he likely would have otherwise. All this applies whether he was a figment of TC's imagination or "real".

One thing about eyelessness in reality, although being born without eyes is entirely feasible, being born without eye-sockets is not.

My theory:

Having no eyes makes Troy a freak in most people's eyes, the same way Covenant is regarded as a freak.

I think it is supposed to make their situations more similar, so that the differences between Troy's and Covenant's character become more obvious.

onions

I do not think so. People behave differently towards a leper and an eyeless. With leprosy they automatically connect
- contagiousness
- some dark, horrendous crime, for which the disease is God's punishment

Besides, there is next to nothing about Troy's relationships in the real world in the book, so for all we know he might have been a highly regarded expert in his micro-evironment.

Didn't Troy mention that someone had read him TC's book? Well, since it was a bestseller, maybe he heard it on tape, but if someone DID read it to him, then he must have had at least one close friend/family member who was able/willing to spend a lot of time with him...

"I was born this way," the Warmark said, as if he could see Covenant's astonishment. "A genetic freak. But my parents saw fit to keep me alive, and by the time they died I had learned various ways to function on my own. I got myself into special schools, got special help. It took a few extra years because I had to have most things read to me...

and

I always won. So what did it all amount to? Nothing. I was the freak of the group, that's all.
"I took care of myself as well as I could. But for a place to live, I was pretty much at the mercy of what I could get. So I lived in this apartment house on the ninth floor, and one night it burned down.

It sounds like he had a pretty solitary existence, even before his parents died. I get the feeling that Troy survived on other people's sense of responsibility rather than their love. That and his own perseverance, of course.

That being said... looking at these passages, I'm not surprised at Troy's failures in the Land. I liked Troy, but this supposed master of spatial cognition didn't even have a working fire escape route planned. Besides, if I was blind, I think I'd find someplace to live closer to ground level.

He also says, "I don't know which way Foul is going to try to get at us. But I can beat him in a fair fight." Who could possibly think somebody named Lord Foul would ever fight in any way remotely resembling fair?

Sylvanus wrote:He also says, "I don't know which way Foul is going to try to get at us. But I can beat him in a fair fight." Who could possibly think somebody named Lord Foul would ever fight in any way remotely resembling fair?

I never thought that he was much of a general. He led his army from his capital to a far corner of the Land, to a place where he thought he could hold off Fleshharrower's army. Unfortunately his army had it's back to a desert. How was he to get supplies even if the army had stayed? The Raver's army was between him and his supplies.

The only thing that didn't make him look worse was that Fleshharrower was a bigger fool than he was. Why go chasing his army out to nowhere? They'd starve out in the desert anyway. Send enough to keep Troy busy and go to the heart of the Land, Revelwood and Revelstone.

I can't find anything saying that Troy had ever planned an actual battle. It would seem that everything was on paper, and mock-battles. Troy was a tactical genius, but he had no practical experience. When the exercises showed who <I>would</I> win the battle if it was real, they probably packed it in for the day. So he never had to consider how long it would actually take or supply lines. And he was probably so sure of his ability, since everyone had always told him he was the best, that he didn't bother with a back door.

Of course, Quaan could have insisted.